“If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous... There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.”

[Blaise Pascal]

The organ that is all about making connections inside of us, our brain, is profoundly divided. But if we focus on this detail — on the “whatness” of it — as we might be tempted to do, we will miss the knowledge and implications of it — or its “howness.”

To innovate, we need to shed some light into the nature of our thinking. This alone is a very good (and some may argue necessary) reason why understanding the forces at play can keep us in the game over the long haul.

Contemporary arguments debunk the myth that creativity resides in one hemisphere and rationality in the other. Because we think we know, we we stopped looking. But that doesn't mean there aren't important distinctions in the role each hemisphere plays in our lives. It's the things we don't know we don't know that will get us. It's a fascinating topic and it calls us to patiently revisit some assumptions based upon oversimplification.

Renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist says the divided nature of our brain has profoundly altered human behavior, culture, and society. In The Master and His Emissary, he says we now know that every type of function —including reason, emotion, language, and imagery— is subserved not by one hemisphere alone, but by both.

He says:

Both hemispheres, it is now clear, can deal with either kind of material, words or images, in different ways. Subsequent attempts to decide which set of functions are segregated in which hemisphere have mainly been discarded, piece after piece of evidence suggesting that every identifiable human activity is actually served at some level by both hemispheres. There is, apparently, vast redundancy. Enthusiasm for finding the key to hemisphere differences has waned, and it is no longer respectable for a neuroscientist to hypothesise on the subject.

This is hardly surprising, given the set of beliefs about the differences between the hemispheres which has passed into the popular consciousness. These beliefs could, without much violence to the facts, be characterised as versions of the idea that the left hemisphere is somehow gritty, rational, realistic but dull, and the right hemisphere airy-fairy and impressionistic, but creative and exciting;

[...]

In reality, both hemispheres are crucially involved in reason, just as they are in language; both hemispheres play their part in creativity. Perhaps the most absurd of these popular misconceptions is that the left hemisphere, hard-nosed and logical, is somehow male, and the right hemisphere, dreamy and sensitive, is somehow female.

If there is any evidence that could begin to associate each sex with a single cerebral hemisphere in this way, it tends to indicate, if anything, the reverse – but that is another story and one that I will not attempt to deal with in this book. Discouraged by this kind of popular travesty, neuroscience has returned to the necessary and unimpeachable business of amassing findings, and has largely given up the attempt to make sense of the findings, once amassed, in any larger context.

He then sets out to illustrate how the way in which each hemisphere uses its different function, and to what end, that matters. The relationship between the two hemispheres is where things get interesting.

Nonetheless it does not seem to me likely that the ways in which the hemispheres differ are simply random, dictated by purely contingent factors such as the need for space, or the utility of dividing labour, implying that it would work just as well if the various specific brain activities were swapped around between hemispheres as room dictates.

Fortunately, I am not alone in this. Despite the recognition that the idea has been hijacked by everyone from management trainers to advertising copywriters, a number of the most knowledgeable people in the field have been unable to escape the conclusion that there is something profound here that requires explanation.

Many world renown neuroscientists have come to see the involvement of both hemispheres in everything we do, but also to appreciate the differences in roles.

McGilchrist believes there is a world of difference between the two and his work related to understanding what's involved took him through a multidisciplinary study of apparently unrelated ares like neurology and psychology, but also philosophy, literature and art, and even, to some extent, archaeology and anthropology to make his case in The Master and His Emissary.

He says, the left hemisphere has an emphasis on doing, on things mechanistic, it can only see static, isolated things, explicit things, and things it knows. Though unaware of its dependence, we could think of the left hemisphere as an ’emissary’ of the right hemisphere. The world of the left hemisphere is fixed, decontextualized, and characterized by denotative language where abstraction yields clarity.

The right hemisphere by contrast yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, incarnate, living beings within the context of the living world never perfectly known. It is the Master. It gets process, metaphor, the interconnected nature of things, and implicit knowledge. Wholeness and conceptual thinking, but also to grasp things we will never fully know, are the responsibility to the right hemisphere.

Research bares this distinction —the left hemisphere is good at dealing with specifics, tools, and machines, while the right hemisphere gets the depth of natural experience and the embodied world. Impaired function in either one results in an incomplete version of the world. To understand how the two relate, we can look at the role of attention in determining the context of our lives.

Our reality changes based on the amount of attention we put on it. Conversely, what we find in the world changes how we see things. It's a self-reinforcing loop.

Innovation is a process that begins when external pressure or internal decay disturbs the relation between a community and its context or environment, a relationship maintained by some convention. Which is why it's a good idea to involve the ever vigilant right hemisphere whose job is to constantly scan what goes on, whatever that might be, to stay open to change —whether negative or danger or positive— so we can respond appropriately to it.

Without the right hemisphere we have a drive to optimizing what is known; we have perfection, says McGilchrist, but emptiness due to complete self-reference.

The relationship between the two hemispheres —the one that can know things, and the one that is forever in flux— happens in the corpus callosum. This is where things come together. One of the main, if not the main functions of the corpus callosum is to inhibit. 35% of the brain's frontal lobe function is to inhibit, to help us stand back in time and space.

We rarely recognize innovation while it’s happening. Instead, innovation is often a label applied after the fact, when the results are clear and the new convention has become established.Which is where being removed from things a little helps us recognize what is going on.

We can use this function to be Machiavellian, to hold ourselves back long enough to read our opponent's mind and outwit them. For example, we can be second to market and get enough things right to prevail over the innovators like Facebook did after Friendster. So along with context and quality, timing makes a big difference.

But that is not the only benefit we get from distancing ourselves in time and space.

Being somewhat removed from things is what gives us the profoundly human gift of empathy. Distance helps us empathize with someone else. The distance from the world is necessary. When we're right up against it, we just bite. Standing back allows us to see better, to appreciate what is going on.

To make decisions, we need an oversimplified version of reality, we need maps. It's no good to have every single little detail. We need just enough specifics and reference points within a broader understanding of direction and environment.

But it would be a mistake to think that one hemisphere is better at imagination and the other is just for reason. We need both hemisphere for imagination and both for reason. The nature of the two worlds as described offer two versions of our world, which we obviously combine in different ways all the time.

What happens when we prioritize the virtual over the real?

Our left brain, particularly in the West, is very vocal and convincing. There is also a hall of mirrors going on —the more we get trapped into this, the more we undercut the situations and evidence that doesn't reflect back what we already know. Reason is important. However, we do need to see the big picture, to return to a broader context.

McGilchrist suggests that the drive to language was not principally to do with communication or thought, but manipulation, the main aim of the left hemisphere, which manipulates the right hand. Which is why we are better served —and serve our human capacity to hold ourselves to the space and time between things— when we engage in conversation between implicit and explicit, when we bring the world of the possible closer to what is possible for us.

As Einstein said, “the intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant.” It looks like we've created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. Like the two hemispheres need to co-operate, so we need the broader understanding that comes from purpose, from aligning values with value that we can get back the ability to think creatively.

Innovation is the process of putting new ideas into practice. it requires creativity for the doing part, but initiates and benefits tremendously from imagination, which is the primary gift of human consciousness. Conversation is a way to bring the gift of our intuitive mind back.

Case study is an expression marketers and sales professionals borrowed from science. As such, there are at least four types to serve different purposes:

1./ illustrative are primarily descriptive to make the unfamiliar familiar and to give readers a common language about the topic in question;

2./ exploratory or pilot are condensed case studies performed before implementing a large scale investigation. Their basic function is to help identify questions and select types of measurement prior to the main investigation, but we should be careful to test our assumptions about conclusions;

3./ cumulative serve the purpose of not incurring additional expenses when enough information already exists in past studies. Pulling information collected at different times allows us to generalize with a certain degree of accuracy;

4./ critical instance serve the purpose of examining a situation of unique interest to answer cause and effect questions.

When we talk about case studies in marketing, what we mean is simpler, although getting to the results takes work. We mean telling the story of how we progressed through solving a problem or identifying an opportunity and delivering results.

They work best when the narrator is the customer and the story is in their own words. But we can help gather the right information to be relevant to our audience.

The structure of a case study varies slightly, depending on its use. However generally there is one way to construct the flow:

(1.) protagonist — this is the audience, the people we would like to attract

(2.) situation or challenge — this is what happened, the problem that needed solving with specific detail about the kind of loss, discomfort, or challenges it created, including how it made the person feel. We want to be specific in our description in this part of the story. Including the detail will help other people relate to the issue and help us set the stage for providing the measurable part of the outcome.

For example, we needed to improve sales is not as good a description as we needed to increase sales in the Western region by 2x. If this is a customer experience or business issue, what needed fixing? Increasing customer retention from 78% to 89%, or product output by 7%.

(3.) finds a person or company— this is us and the type of problems we solve and opportunities we help create

(4.) who comes up with a response or solution — from a marketing standpoint, the solution is the plan, how the company proposes to go from where we are to where we want to be.

For example, a small business needs to go from making cold calls or generating leads manually to creating a flywheel of qualified inbound leads. Or a large organization wants to go from siloed groups working in parallel paths to a high performing integrated team thatpractices agility of thinking and execution.

(5.) protagonist is called to action— in hero's journey terms, this is the decision making point

(6.) life without following the advice — this is what it would look like if the problem persisted or the opportunity was never realized. There is a point in the hero's journey when a decision means staying in the ordinary world, or stepping into the special world. When we decide not to cross the threshold to the special world, we are pulled back into the refusal of the call.

(*) time line or complication — a nice addition to the story at this point when we need to provide some context and dimension to a case study. This is where we can go on record by putting events in a proper order to indicate dependencies and movement. Who did what when and where. Complication is language that comes straight from McKinsey & Co.

(7.) life following the advice, or results — leads were up by 2x, a cross-functional team handles twice the workload in half the time generating $$$ more revenue, the company is able to transact much more business online and faster thanks to greater server capacity, customer retention is at 90% and life in a high performing environment is less stressful for everyone.

We can use different formats to tell the story. Video conversations are the most captivating because we're drawn to narrative and other people. It's always a good idea to have a transcript, and an audio version, along with a short description of the main points of the story, the action steps, and the results using the customer language as much as possible.

Captioning the video is helpful as well, because sometimes we want to watch something without the sounds on not to disturb colleagues working in the same pace, for example.

Soliciting information for case studies

For video shoots, it's helpful to have a conversation with the customer and take hem through the flow ahead of time, then script the story. The script actually helps us be more spontaneous in the telling, because we know what we want to cover and the parts. We'll transcribe the actual video shoot.

How do we identify case study candidates? When we get results and have a close working relationship, asking is much easier.

But say we're a larger organization with multiple brands, we want to pay attention to customer reviews and social shares, then reach out as appropriate. In general, anything posted in public forums and social networks is considered public domain, but asking is a good idea and can help us uncover other areas of opportunity, or make the story even better by having the conversation that follows our flow.

Companies that engage customer communities have a much better chance of learning how they can help create better experiences by identifying problems or potential issues and helping solve them. We're in business to help people get more of what they want and need. Those are usually the best case studies.

Many companies require business and legal approval to release case studies. In some instances when we cannot get permission to use a company name, we can name the industry and remove some of the identifiable information from the story.

Case studies are a perfect medium for B2B

Case studies are very appropriate for businesses that sell to other businesses. That's because often purchases are made by groups or require several approvals, and the format of a case study presents a concrete and quantified narrative of a company's problem solving abilities and success.

Businesses that serve other businesses tend to occupy niche or narrow markets, which is actually a very good thing. Because the more specific the story the better. This is also why companies that serve other businesses have the opportunity to tell their story to customers regularly through a blog or a series of videos by subject matter experts.

Engineers like to engage with others just like them, they can publish to maintain their professional visibility and to network ideas with peers. Scientists who work outside the pressure of academic publication also love to engage with other scientists.

There is a mechanism at work here, which is about identifying areas of relevancy among customers and prospects, building community, and allowing others to amplify our influence as we meet their needs.

Our customers do want us to tell them our story.

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This is a topic in my talk on influence where I covered mostly the external aspects of connecting with the network effects of building community. But there is much more to this conversation than meets the eye (or the time allotted for the talk.) If you're curious about mastering the language of influence when it comes to customer engagement, drop me a note.

Anyone who's ever attended, spoken at, or organized an event or a major conference knows this—pulling off a successful event is akin to cooking an award winning meal.

Time and time again the conferences we remember and return to are those that manage to create the context that is conducive to making as many connections happen as possible. Building a bridge between attendees and speakers, helping people engage with the expo or trade show floor, and with each other and the topics.

It's not an out of the box recipe

Anyone who has organized events knows we work with cross functional teams and volunteers. Some of the most satisfying event are customer conferences—many organizations in technology call them user group events. They're great ways to get to know customers and prospects better, get them to know us and what is coming up in the product pipeline as well.

Say the event is in another city or country, like Dublin (Ireland), Bermuda, or Edinburgh (Scotland). Do we include bits that bring the city in or the attendees out into it to complete the experience? We may think of shaping the program, selecting, and inviting speakers, but how do we connect the dots during and after the event?

It takes some forethought and planning to create and event—but also a healthy dose of adapting once the event is underway. Because the event doesn't run itself while it's happening, it takes some live facilitating and doing to help participants to make it theirs and have the best experience possible.

Best experience depends on goals—some people come for the topics, to learn more about something, and probably to network with peers:

an explicit want—keep in touch with how the industry talks about xyz topic, find a company that does xyz because I'm working on something in the next week plus (very likely), or month (still top of mind), or quarter (a stretch), or year (congratulations, you're a visionary entrepreneur!), meet or see xyz person

a less obvious, yet still important, need—learn about xyz as a piece of a larger puzzle,or stay relevant in industry or job, find a company that does xyz as a likely partner, meet xyz kind of person to partner with in the near future or longer term

The first reason is easier to deliver on. The less obvious reason, when present, takes a little more doing. Because it's a hope—that the time and energy to attend the event or conference will pay off beyond the explicit goals. Which is where making the environment as conducive to interaction as possible will nudge luck closer to opportunity.

There are many different even formats, keynotes with themed tracks are the most popular and easier to scale. But conversation formats work well, when the moderator is engaged with the topic and the producer cast the characters well.

Other kinds of formats support specific goals—from intense discussions about a problem, to book launches and get to know the author, to the intimacy of fireside chats where the audience is part protagonist, and behind the scenes conversations with C-level executives at their company or business.

Some formats became opportunities to test ideas and business models—for example, we tested a new PDA ordering system by having the event in a restaurant.

Striking the balance for a productive and memorable experience is not magic. It's done on purpose.

Prized organizers have all the ingredients every organizer has. In some cases, they even have more constraints—like no or little budget and fewer sponsors and volunteers. Yet, like famous chefs, they manage to produce fabulous results.

What's the difference?

Great conference organizers do the same job as great directors, with their ability to create a wow experience for diverse audiences on one hand, and providing the vehicle for artists to give their best on stage or on camera on the other.

Experience is also rooted in culture. American audiences are generally bored watching French or Italian movies due to the character-driven plot, where a lot of the action is the inner dialogue with some representation in actual conversation and the hero being the character that tried most.

Making the effort to get better doesn't score too many points in the U.S. where sports get measured inch by inch. Based on working with companies like Disney and Sea World learning how groups process information and live experiences, the Center for Cultural Studies & Analysis says there are seven shoulds—seven beliefs that stand at the root of how groups process information and live experiences (in the US), regardless of their level of skill and knowledge.

This argument is based on the framework developed by the Center for Cultural Studies & Analysis and their seven cultural assumptions that drive American choice. According to Jamie O'Boyle and Dr. Margaret King, Americans share the unconscious assumption that the base unit of American culture is the individual, not the family, clan, tribe, or nation.

Which means when we're creating experiences, we're we are addressing the needs of the individual person or brand. Big difference. This is where many who are used to build for European or Asian markets get a little confused. But the good news is that we now have the tools to help people tell us the level of engagement they want to have with an event.

Given smartphones and tablets, that the technology has caught up by being in everyone's pocket, how do we choreograph the conversation part on top of it? How do we make a group experience when the starting point is individualism?

Thought starters based on culture as the leavening ingredient.

Seven shoulds of conference experience

(1.) Determining our own destiny

The belief that individuals should determine their own destiny needs interpretation. How people choose to approach an experience is a guessing game because it's self-driven. However, to provide the richest environment for attendees and speakers to connect, we can choreograph the stage on which it happens.

Both groups could have a loosely scripted role to prepare for ahead of the event. This will reset expectations on how to play based on individual goals.

(2.) Control over social and physical environment

By attempting to provide control to individuals, organizers are spending less time exploring group experiences, which is where the richness often resides.

A group knowledge flow approach involves a counter intuitive move. That of having fewer, smaller, and more intimate spaces to congregate in. More cafe'-like nooks around convention halls, less narrow paths to and from content areas. Venues like hotels are a challenge.

Noting where and how people congregate and flow at events, despite the physical settings can help find a more suitable venue.

(3.) Authority or “bigness” should be viewed with suspicion

This continues to perpetuate the scarcity mindset cycle. And by virtue of that, it forces the belief that the answers reside outside attendees and only some of the speakers, like keynotes, have them.

A conference should be fertile ground for exploration and dialogue among all with some in a facilitating role, and not a popularity contest.

(4.) Actions should be judged in a moral light

This is not about philanthropy or ethics, though they are both valid considerations.

Walking the talk is a marvelous test when in a group situation where culturally the outcome for the group is rarely considered.

A better leadership format is validating the group's vision and helping support it.

(5.) You should have as many choices as possible (not)

Two factors put the experience at risk here

a./ analysis-paralysis at the personal level with herd response as a result;

b./ which leads to individual conformity looking like personal choice.

Does the director give us a choice when she makes the movie?

(6.) Anything can and should be improved

“This is the way we've always organized our conference” is not a good enough reason to keep going through a broken process that has not kept up with the times and how people absorb information and participate in the knowledge flow.

More better questions rather than pat answers in the themes. Learning through questioning at the individual level and as a group experience are good ideas to try.

(7.) The present should be lived and experienced fully

Be here and now before we go ahead and look for the future to hold all answers. We know already discovery happens through asking good questions.

As William Isaacs wrote, so far the digital revolution is giving us connection but not contact... one simple touch of a human hand could far exceed all the impact of all the digital libraries in the land.

What real time learning means

Real time learning doesn't mean using Twitter and Facebook to comment on sessions, speakers, and the program. Taking a hint from culture, and combining it with our social nature, real time learning means formatting the conversation in a way that is conducive to drawing out and harnessing the collective knowledge and experience in the room and using the dialogue to move to a new place—together.

Community managers know facilitation and connection are essential to productive dialogue. Because they know communities evolve at a faster pace than businesses; and so do standards or commonly accepted practices and behaviors. See also how simple rules evolve in communities.

If asked, we'd likely say that the kind of conference we'd like to attend is built to create personal access and opportunity in addition to knowledge sharing. To achieve this format we requires a different mindset and personal accountability to make the live experience work for the people who shows up.

Conference organizers and volunteers have an opportunity to create this kind of live experience.

What kinds of events do we want?

Which camp are we in on the question about identity that follows? Is our identity shaped by derivative values (I'm cool because I'm attending this conference) or reflective values (this conference is cool because I'm attending it)?

Answer the question in the privacy of your mind, and you'll know what kinds of events we'll continue to have...

Trust is a fundamental building block in relationships—a discount or premium depending on the level of trust we have. The delta between the two could be significant. It could make or break a deal, an opportunity, or a relationship. What can we do about trust?

We don't buy it, though some try, or reinforce it by telling people they should “just trust us.” Trust is one of those things we get as a result of doing something else better, and it's part of our better nature. In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker says:

“People do more for their fellows than return favors and punish cheaters. They often perform generous acts without the slightest hope for payback ranging from leaving a tip in a restaurant they will never visit again to throwing themselves on a live grenade to save their brothers in arms. [Robert] Trivers together with the economists Robert Frank and Jack Hirshleifer has pointed out that pure magnanimity can evolve in an environment of people seeking to discriminate fair weather friends from loyal allies. Signs of heartfelt loyalty and generosity serve as guarantors of one's promises reducing a partner's worry that you will default on them. The best way to convince a skeptic that you are trustworthy and generous is to be trustworthy and generous.”

When we focus on being trustworthy, we demonstrate integrity in the way we behave—we do what we say we're going to do, and do so ethically. Because the kind of things we say does matter to the quality of the experience we want to create, not just trust itself.

Which is why trust was born locally. When we know someone, when their part of our community, we have two things going for us— 1./ more information from interactions, are they really who they portray themselves to be? And 2./ more social pressure to behave consistently on the nice side of things. Fear of retribution could be an incentive, but also the desire to contribute positively to the collective well-being.

When institutions were first created, the idea was to bring people working in different parts of the organization together to deliver collective promises. Since we know from many reports and sources, including daily news that trust in institutions is down, we can safely infer that the gap between promises made and promises kept has widened considerably.

And that gap is where technology has come in to shed some light, or rather create better transparency of what is going on. Trust researcher Rachel Botsman defines trust as “a confident relationship to the unknown.”

She says:

when you view trust through this lens, it starts to explain why it has the unique capacity to enable us to cope with uncertainty, to place our faith in strangers, to keep moving forward.

Human beings are remarkable at taking trust leaps. Do you remember the first time you put your credit card details into a website? That's a trust leap. I distinctly remember telling my dad that I wanted to buy a navy blue secondhand Peugeot on eBay, and he rightfully pointed out that the seller's name was "Invisible Wizard" and that this probably was not such a good idea.

Botsman's work is focused on researching how technology is changing the human glue to society. Why companies like AirBnB and Uber are successful, despite their brokering connections between complete strangers, and the evolving line in how we trust each other.

For instance, do men and women trust differently in digital environments? Does the way we build trust face-to-face translate online? Does trust transfer? So if you trust finding a mate on Tinder, are you more likely to trust finding a ride on BlaBlaCar [French ride sharing company]?

But from studying hundreds of networks and marketplaces, there is a common pattern that people follow, and I call it "climbing the trust stack."

She says trust has only evolved in three significant chapters throughout the course of human history—local, institutional, and the age we're now entering, which is distributed trust, using technology to create transparency.

For a long time, until the mid-1800s, trust was built around tight-knit relationships. So say I lived in a village with the first five rows of this audience, and we all knew one another, and say I wanted to borrow money. The man who had his eyes wide open, he might lend it to me, and if I didn't pay him back, you'd all know I was dodgy. I would get a bad reputation, and you would refuse to do business with me in the future.

Trust was mostly local and accountability-based.

In the mid-19th century, society went through a tremendous amount of change. People moved to fast-growing cities such as London and San Francisco, and a local banker here was replaced by large corporations that didn't know us as individuals. We started to place our trust into black box systems of authority, things like legal contracts and regulation and insurance, and less trust directly in other people. Trust became institutional and commission-based.

The black box system also had a robust marketing engine, which included what in communication we have called propaganda to indicate the wild west of getting the message out and building authority based on power unbalances.

Says Botsman:

It's widely talked about how trust in institutions and many corporate brands has been steadily declining and continues to do so. I am constantly stunned by major breaches of trust: the News Corp phone hacking, the Volkswagen emissions scandal, the widespread abuse in the Catholic Church, the fact that only one measly banker went to jail after the great financial crisis, or more recently the Panama Papers that revealed how the rich can exploit offshore tax regimes. And the thing that really surprises me is why do leaders find it so hard to apologize, I mean sincerely apologize, when our trust is broken?

[...]

It would be easy to conclude that institutional trust isn't working because we are fed up with the sheer audacity of dishonest elites, but what's happening now runs deeper than the rampant questioning of the size and structure of institutions. We're starting to realize that institutional trust wasn't designed for the digital age. Conventions of how trust is built, managed, lost and repaired -- in brands, leaders and entire systems -- is being turned upside down.

This is ans exciting prospect, but it's also frightening. Because it forces many of us to have to rethink how trust is built and destroyed with our customers, with our employees, even our loved ones. For example, she says, the reason why we would likely not leave a towel on the bathroom floor (as we do at hotels) at an AirBnB is that guests are rated by hosts:

and that those ratings are likely to impact their ability to transact in the future. It's a simple illustration of how online trust will change our behaviors in the real world, make us more accountable in ways we cannot yet even imagine.

In the early days of social media, the space between free—the cultural underpinning of the Web to date —and paid for by —as in sponsored, which is what pays for all the free stuff— was social capital. Now with social networks, things have gotten a bit more muddled. But it still holds true. Because the things we do for free, cost us something —attention, time, effort. What they earn us is advancement in relationships, share of mind, and top of mind.

But it's not as straight a line or not as fast to converting that social capital. We may need to add products and services people can pay for to keep being generous with our time and work. For example, access to speaking opportunities, or consulting work. [Please, feel free to inquire, if you're looking to take control of the narrative.]

The way we treat trust in society is changing, Says Botsman:

and it's creating this big shift away from the 20th century that was defined by institutional trust towards the 21st century that will be fueled by distributed trust. Trust is no longer top-down. It's being unbundled and inverted. It's no longer opaque and linear. A new recipe for trust is emerging that once again is distributed among people and is accountability-based.

Many of us may be comfortable getting into cars driven by strangers, meeting up with someone we swiped right to be matched with, and sharing our homes with people we do not know. So there is a trust shift that technology platforms create, which allows these kinds of things to have scale.

But there is one technology platform where we still need help and that is conversation. At the same time this revolution in how we share and meet up is happening, the friction-less ways in which we can find a place to stay and a ready ride, we also desire and crave the type of connections and rapport we can only build over time.

We seek for something to say beyond the posts to social networks and media at our disposal, something that feels genuine, that in a way cannot be gamed, to help us bring our story to the fore, explain ourselves to us, and get us in conversation with reality—and not just score us gold stars and points.

As poet David Whyte says, conversation is the meeting of self with the world, the frontier of how we negotiate meaning. The degree to which we pay attention to things outside of us and our own intention creates our identity.

For my part I want to help people understand the anatomy of conversation and what happens to the body and mind as we go about testing the different levels of discourse so we can get ourselves right and embrace the opportunities to be more purposeful and attractive at the same time as we, in the words of Rachel Botsman, “embrace the opportunities to redesign systems that are more transparent, inclusive and accountable.”

If you're interested in engaging my services, I help organizations attract opportunity and create or increase brand value through mastery of conversation and technology. My simple process is designed to discover the facts, take control of the narrative, strategize solutions and processes, design experience for performance, and master the simple, sustainable actions that accelerate momentum and growth.

How many of us think of a letter as media? Do we consider writing a letter as part of a conversation?

If we don't, we should.

In 1960, pioneering American artist Sol LeWitt and sculptor Eva Hesse met for the first time and became close friends. In 1965, Eva found herself facing a creative block during a period of self-doubt, and told Sol of her frustrating predicament.

LeWitt replied with this letter read by Oscar-nominated, Golden Globe-winning actor Benedict Cumberbatch. The advice sounds similar to what we would give:

And when we're honest with ourselves, we may even discover that self expression —in business and in life— beckons us, regardless of what anyone thinks. LeWitt-Cumberbatch says, “Learn to say ‘Fuck You’ to the world once in a while. You have every right to.”

It's important not to overthink:

… stop worrying about big, deep things such as “to decide on a purpose and way of life, a consistent approach to even some impossible end or even an imagined end.” You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty.

Then you will be able to

DO

But also not to underestimate the importance of practicing our craft by doing the work. Because we may discover that it is through the work that we bring ourselves to the fore:

... don't think that your work has to conform to any preconceived form, idea or flavor. It can be anything you want it to be. But if life would be easier for you if you stopped working — then stop. Don't punish yourself. However, I think that it is so deeply engrained in you that it would be easier to

DO

This conversation with self-doubt is something we all have. The best to keep practicing it through our work, because as we do it, we create enough dots to connect in looking back:

It seems I do understand your attitude somewhat, anyway, because I go through a similar process every so often. I have an "Agonizing Reappraisal" of my work and change everything as much as possible — and hate everything I've done, and try to do something entirely different and better. Maybe that kind of process is necessary to me, pushing me on and on. The feeling that I can do better than that shit I just did.

[...]

After a while you can see some are better than others but also you can see what direction you are going.

And when we have enough dots to connect, a picture starts to form of the human experience. The picture tells us the story of this experience through our personal lens, it shows us patterns in what we've accomplished, and we can take control of our direction, make it better by making it ours.

Letters are a form of media where we engage in conversation with ourselves via the communication with another. Putting our problems and doubts to paper allows us to consider them ourselves. Once we can look at even what we might think of as the most difficult of circumstances, we diminish their power over us. There they are, ink on a page.

The beauty and power of the letter as media reside in the ability to be sincere because of the relationship between sender and reader. Which puts listening, reflecting, and connecting within the safe space of intimacy. In the process of this exchange empathy and compassion meet, “to see us at once beautiful and brave,” as poet R. M. Rilke would say.

Established organizations count many advantages, including the ability to turn the market forces they leveraged to get there into strengths. They become very good at optimizing processes up and down the value chain—from product enhancements to go-to market strategies, to the use of automation tools to be ever more efficient.

Proven processes, efficiency, and automation help a business scale.

But in a world that is constantly changing, well-oiled machines also tend to become very resistant to responding to shifts. When momentum becomes inertia, we don't challenge assumptions as much, and stop being curious about “what-ifs,” critical to innovating. We tend to pay attention most to the things we're working on. Rewards, incentives, and our physical working conditions (including the very structure of the organization) become a natural barrier to exploration.

Startups are on the other end of the spectrum. Their challenge is to be around long enough to start making calls about growing, and scaling.

Entrepreneurs know this maxim well—work in the business too intensely and we forget to work on the business. Growth and sustainability depend on the ability to keep looking for ways to do what we do best (our strengths) and create the support structure around us to take on the rest. This is were we have a hard time hitting the sweet spot on when it's the right time to build out our team.

Constant experimentation helps nascent businesses zero into delivering a superior experience, but it can be addictive.

The illusion that we can keep up with the rate of change of evolving markets gets in the way of establishing processes and a structure that can help us grow into what's next. When we don't ground the business into a strong vision and a strategic plan to go from where we are to where we want to be, we run the risk of it not taking off properly or at all. What and how we pay attention to what's going on makes a big difference to working on the business.

In both cases, our decisions depend on many variables. We rely on experience, skill, and our support networks to find and analyze leading indicators that something important is happening in our market, industry, and/or business and we should pay attention. It's our call to decide which thread or advice to follow, and which to take with a grain of salt.

This is where creating structure around how we make decisions is helpful. For example, shifting from trying to predict the future as if it were a point, to looking at it as a range, a spectrum within two bookends—a dire scenario on one end and a rosy one on the other. With the caution that when we bookend our options we should not be too extreme, just consider what is likely to happen. As a deliberate process book ending prepares us for what could go wrong.

Finding someone who has solved the same problem also works well. Because we're are better at giving, than taking our own advice. At a personal level, the actions we choose and the opinions we share are influenced by biases, emotions, reason, and even memories. In business, we'd like to think all our decisions are rational, made after weighing pros and cons. But that is not always the case.

We could also be focusing on the wrong things. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Twersky say, “Our thinking gets befuddled not so much by our emotions, but by our 'cognitive illusions,' or mistaken intuitions, and other flawed, fragmented mental constructs.”

Kahneman “points out two ways in which focusing on the wrong thing can skew” our choices:

First, there's a gap between your real life and the stories you tell yourself about it, and you're apt to fixate on the latter. Stressing the importance of this divide, Kahneman says, “Attention both to what you choose to experience and what you choose to think about it is at the very core of how I approach questions of well-being.”

We are thus split into two kinds of selves that pay attention to different things. Our “experiencing self” is the one that thinks in the here and now, our evaluative “remembering self” looks back at what happened, the emotional high points and outcomes to create thinking. The latter is not always accurate—we recall the highlights and not the low moments.

One area where we could use more practice is agility. What many organizations want is the ability to be more nimble in how they process information in the form of stories and data, and how they adapt to respond to market conditions. Even within established businesses, we have the opportunity to get timing less wrong, for example.

When we're able to bring ourselves to bear more fully into that conversation about market, timing, product and people mix, we start experiencing a different kind of inputs we can use to make our services more responsive, for example. Playfulness can help us stay with the problem or the question, and opportunity more fully long enough to defer decision-making and explore more creative angles.

The Second City is a company and a creative space that has launched the careers of many comic performers like Tina Fey and Steven Colbert. They've also produced award-winning experiences. Their work explores improvisation as a process co-create through dialogue, give ideas a chance to be acted on (“yes, AND”), experience reconciling the needs of individuals with those of the team, be unafraid to speak up, include failure, take turns in leading, and listening.

The process is a framework where we learn to experience the moment and carry it forward creatively. In Yes, And The Second City Kelly Leonard and Tom Yorton say:

We are at our happiest and most successful when we are working as improvisers. When we are fiercely following the elements of improvisation, we generate ideas both quickly and efficiently; we're more engaged with out coworkers; our interactions with clients become richer or more long-standing; we weather rough storms with more aplomb, and we don't work burdened by fear of failure.

When we are in full improviser mode, we become better leaders and better followers; likewise, we hear things that we didn't hear before because we are listening deeply and fully in the moment.

Because we worry less about who is doing what, how we do things around here, and focus more on what is happening and how we can keep moving it along. Curiosity drives the process, commitment makes it work, and confidence is a desirable outcome. In this sense, conversation is also a tool we can use to practice agility, the ability to learn to turn to each other for help and support, and the understanding that we're working together to create better answers.

Qualities such as “the ability to process on the fly,” a “willingness to relinquish power,” “ease with creating space for others to contribute,” and “individuals who can learn how to learn from failure” can be learned:

practicing improvisation is like yoga for your professional development—a solid, strengthening workout that improves emotional intelligence, teaches you to pivot out of tight and uncomfortable spaces, and helps you become both a more compelling leader and a more collaborative follower.

Even better, these qualities are fully transferable to your life outside the office. The benefits of improvisation can extend to your personal relationships, whether with your partner, your family, or your friends.

Listening is a big part of using conversation as a tool. It's critical to many parts of business. From their experience with improvisation, Kelly Leonard and Tom Yorton say:

Many of us believe that we are good listeners, but there is a huge difference between listening to understand and listening while waiting for a chance to respond. One enriches and broadens our perspective; the other feeds our need to be right and in control of the conversation.

[...]

most of the world operates in the listening-to-respond mode.

We engage different processes when we listen to understand—where we involve our cognitive abilities, and listen-to-respond—which is more behavioral and subject to bias. It's hard to appreciate the difference when we spend so little time practicing the two side to side, and even less practicing the first one.

Agility is a muscle we can exercise through practice. It's something we can decide to do more of, which has big impact in how we relate and learn. Organization size or longevity have less influence on our decision to adopt this process than its culture.

I'm starting something related to using conversation as a tool to help us get more of what we want (and stay away from what we don't want). If you're interested in learning more, you can sign up and get first dibs here. Or use the form below.

Keep me in the loop on Conversation as a Tool

We're all motivated by different things. Some of us are focused on goals we want to achieve, so that is what drives us and we get good at managing priorities. But some of us are also motivated by problems we want to solve—deadlines energize this group who is more focused on picking up what could go wrong with things.

When we have the right motivations in the right seats, we thrive. Doctors who are troubleshooters do better at finding what's wrong with a patient. Insurance people tend to be problem solvers. But either group can be more oriented to achieving goals based on context, for example their specific role. So it's not so cut and dry.

Our motivation could be mostly internal, or it could come from other people telling us what do to. Some of us prefer to have many options to choose from, others tend to stick to procedures. We may make decisions based on wanting things to stay the same, or maybe we like change and new things better.

Dan Pink dedicated a whole book to motivation. In Drive, he says most businesses have not caught up with the new understanding of what motivates us. At a high level, he says we're motivated by three things:

1.) Autonomy—or the desire to direct our own lives2.) Mastery—the urge to get better and better at something that matters3.) Purpose—the yearning to do what we do in the service larger than ourselves

As the pace of change continues to accelerate and technology helps us be everywhere from anywhere, we're translating autonomy as the ability to control our time. Entrepreneurs are fierce in their desire to decide when to do what. But the trend is catching on in many corporate environments.

So many of us are lifelong learners. It's mind boggling the variety and types of courses and programs we can take to work on our skills and practice with peers. People who teach and many business owners are engaged on workshops and online courses all the time. Because a great side benefits of joining such experiences is an instant network of people like-motivated. This trend too has spread beyond the industry conference attendance for people working in companies any size.

While purpose has been a trend since we can remember. And it is the main force changing how organizations and people do business. Peel back the layers on the best consultants, business leaders, and professionals and you will find a strong purpose or mission.

In this world where more and more people are motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose high motivation teams want to work with highly motivated people. Are companies paying attention? Or are they still using carrot-and-stick extrinsic motivators? The use of personal devices to get around organizations' firewalls could provide a useful cue that intrinsic motivation is a strong force.

Type I people and incentives

Dan Pink coined a term for people driven by intrinsic motivation—Type I.

This is a good thing because when we recognize it and support the underlying behaviors, we can improve performance and deepen satisfaction. Both lead to higher engagement. We're not quite there, says Gallup in their annual survey. The latest report still shows 30 percent at the most are engaged at work.

The problem is companies are still trying to solve the motivation gap with the same methods that created the carrot-and-stick approach. And this doesn't work with Type I people who want more control over their destiny, are eager to build their skills, and have a strong desire to join a tribe and work to make things better.

We're still driving last century's models rather than looking at the problem in the context of today's business reality. The problem is compounded when we introduce incentives into the system. Every organization that says they want to employ the best and brightest may find that people may come for the money, but that's not why they stay.

The results of an MIT study demonstrated that while there is a correspondence between effort expended and inventive expected for mechanical skills. However, when the task involved even a modicum of cognitive skills, a larger reward led to poorer performance.

Studies at MIT, the University of Chicago, and Carnegie Mellon all found similar results. Higher pay equals better performance for rote work, but does not work the same way when even rudimentary cognitive skills are involved.

The Zen of Compensation

Based on experiments that psychologists, sociologists, and economists have replicated over and over again, the highest rewards corresponded to the poorest performance. When the task is simple and straight forward, monetary rewards work, when it is complicated and requires conceptual, creative thinking, they don't.

For Type I people, says Pink, money is a motivator with a slight twist ― the best use of monetary incentive for work is to pay people enough and take the money issue off the table.

He says, there are three ways to make this work ― 1./ ensure internal and external fairness; 2./ pay more than average; 3./ if you use performance metrics, make them wide ranging, relevant, and hard to game.

Internal fairness means paying people commensurate with their colleagues. External fairness means paying people in line with others doing similar work in similar organizations.

[...]

(One important addendum: Paying people the Type I way doesn't mean paying everyone the same amount. If Fred has a harder job or contributes more to the organization than you, he deserves a richer deal. And, as it turns out, several studies have shown that most people don't have a beef with that. Why? It's fair)

Getting the internal and external equity right isn't in itself a motivator. But it is a way to avoid putting the issue of money back on the table and making it a de-motivator.

When we want better talent, we should consider paying better, too.

In the mid-19080s, George Akerlof, who later won the Nobel Prize in economics, and his wife, Janet Yellen, who's also an economist, discovered that some companies seemed to be overpaying their workers. Instead of paying employees the wages that supply and demand would have predicted, they gave their workers a little more. It wasn't because the companies were selfless and it wasn't because they were stupid. It was because they were savvy. Paying great people a little more than the market demands, Akerlof and Yellen found, could attract better talent, reduce turnover, and boost productivity and morale.

Higher wages could actually reduce a company's costs.

This is another way to help people focus on the work rather than worry about the money.

The third point Dan Pink makes is about finding the right mix of metrics. When goals are about just one number, we tend to sandbag the rest, but when goals are about every number, we may find it hard to prioritize what matters to moving the needle for the business. So it needs to be a mix of both.

To be sure, finding the right mix of metrics is difficult and will vary considerably across organizations. And some people will inevitably find a way to game even the most carefully calibrated system. But using a variety of measures that reflect the totality of great work can transform often counter-productive “if-then” rewards into less combustible “now that” rewards.

In most cases, only time (and experience) will tell the best approach for each organization. But it's a good idea to think long term if we want the business to endure and grow. We tend to attract like-minds.

“Virtue may be defined as a habit of mind (animi) in harmony with reason and the order of nature. It has four parts: wisdom (prudentiam), justice, courage, temperance.”

[Cicero]

Long before our time, Plato outlined a list of four qualities, which became known as Cardinal Virtues. They were prudence, or wisdom, justice, or fairness, the most important virtue, temperance, also known as restraint and the practice of self control and discretion, and courage, or strength, endurance, and the ability to confront fear, uncertainty, and intimidation.

Roman orator Cicero expanded on the original scheme, and they were later adapted by Thomas Aquinas. Emperor Marcus Aurelius discusses the Cardinal Virtues in his Meditations saying they are “goods” a person should identify in one's own mind rather than “wealth or things which conduce to luxury or prestige.”

The virtues are often depicted as female allegorical figures. Cardinal comes from Lat. cardo, which translates in modern times as pillar. So in philosophical terms, there were the main pillars of leading a virtuous life.

Aristotle said that we can achieve virtue by maintaining the Mean, a balance between two excesses. Buddha referred to the Middle Path as a peaceful way of leading life by negotiating between asceticism and pleasure seeking.

In his Autobiography, American polymath, author, and inventor Benjamin Franklin describes his drive to constantly improve himself. Franklin was self-taught, excelled as an athlete. He was a man of letters, a printer, a scientist, a wit, an editor, and a writer, and he was probably the most successful diplomat in American history.

He wrote the book to help guide his son by offering philosophical commentary and offer pragmatic advice. Franklin wanted to see a general improvement in humanity—whether through more universal access to learning by setting up the first subscription library and being instrumental in forming the first university in Pennsylvania, or in finding ways to ensure the streets were kept clean and well lit. A model citizen and statesman.

When we set out to help improve others, it's a good idea to take our own advice. Franklin did so. In 1726, at the age of 20, he set out to attain moral perfection. To do so, he came up with a a thirteen-step plan.

The following are his named virtues, along with their precepts:

Temperance—eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

Silence—speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Order—let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

Resolution—resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

Frugality—make no expense but to do good to others or yourself, i.e., waste nothing.

Industry—lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

Justice—wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

Moderation—avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

Cleanliness—tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

Tranquillity—be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

Chastity—rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.

Humility—imitate Jesus and Socrates.

These steps were a method he used to refocus his behavior on reinforcing positive habits.

To track how he did in practicing the virtues, Franklin devised a simple method—using a grid to represent days of the week, and rows to represent the virtues, he indicated with a dot when he was in violation. His goal was to have the fewest marks possible tackling virtues in the order in which he listed them.

Each day, he would also record the progress made in all the other virtues, regardless of the week's focus. Industry was his target virtue on week number six. Once he was done with humility, number thirteen, he would start over.

By going through the process, Franklin as surprised of his faults being more numerous than he had imagined. He was 20, after all, and did enjoy the company of women and liked his beer.

Of humility, he says:

“In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”

Franklin invented the lightning rod, the odometer, bifocals, and we could argue the self-help book.

He was the only Founding Father who is a signatory of all four of the major documents of the founding of the United States 1./ the Declaration of Independence; 2./ the Treaty of Paris; 3./ the Treaty of Alliance with France; 4./ and the United States Constitution.

Conversation is not just our ability to verbalize information, it’s also our ability to process information, of becoming aware of what we know, the internal dialogue we have with ourselves and our mind, the interaction between what we think and what we say, but also between what we say and what we do.

Many of the most productive conversations we have lead to an understanding of sorts. In some cases they allow us to connect with one another in a way that leads to solving a problem, advancing a project, and creating opportunity for a next step or action.

In Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving in Roger Fisher and William Ury of the Harvard Negotiation Process say that behaviors like searching for a single answer, assuming there is a fixed pie, and thinking that “solving their problem is their problem,” are problematic. They make us short-sighted and rigid, not to mention unimaginative, in an environment where, save highly bureaucratic lock-ins, things can and do change quickly.

Developing options is a more mature approach. It leverages our ability to prepare for and respond to situations, rather than reacting, and helps make the opportunity a win/win. Because we never do know when we'll meet the other party again, and in what circumstances.

Ury and Fisher provide a prescription for inventing creative options. They say we need to:

separate the act of inventing options from the act of judging them

broaden the options on the table rather than look for a single answer

search for mutual gains

invent ways for making the decision easy

Before we go ahead and jump through the brainstorming rabbit hole we should do a few things really well to set ourselves up for success. Since the situation—a negotiation—involves both what is on offer and what needs to be done in response, we should treat it as a strategic conversation.

This means we should:

define purpose—participants should have a clear understanding of the purpose for the session or sessions should be with emphasis on what we want to have in hand by the end of the meeting

engage multiple perspectives—given that the scope is to broaden options, we should resist the temptation of inviting only the people who think like us; instead, we should consider having the right mix based on experience, expertise, but also strong idea generators. For this application, limit to 5-8 people

frame the issues—it's useful for the facilitator to provide a high level map to orient the group on what is going on and help people navigate options based on future possibilities and key trade-offs or choice points

set the scene—this may be obvious to some, but we should arrange the environment with different kinds of tools like flip chart, a blackboard, and markers, or have big pads on hand and the fewer distractions possible; even better when the setting is not the office but a more creative space

make it an experience—this could be fun! Say the topic is the humane treatment of animals, how about doing the session at the local zoo? We should think of something that engages both emotional and analytical thinking

During the actual session, we can arrange for the conversation to keep flowing as people remain open to listening and participating by:

asking people to sit next to each other in a semi circle, for example, so everyone is facing the issue—physical proximity engages collaboration, facing the problem reinforces the mental attitude we're in it together

clarifying the ground rules, including the “no-criticism rule”—when people new to each other are present, it's a good idea to start with introductions; negative talk is off limits; and we're off the record. Idea generation works out best when we have the freedom to move beyond the obvious (especially since all the obvious ideas are usually taken)

making space for imagination, because it's hard work—as anyone who's ever tried to come up with the best possible future will attest, most of us have at best a vague idea of what we want. This is ironically why we choose the easy way out in negotiation by talking ourselves out of coming up with multiple options and instead hold “because I say so” positions

recording ideas so everyone can see them—it's a good idea to take notes s well, but writing out or drawing the key points in a place where everyone can see them helps get on the same page faster, and gain a visible sense of progress. It also reduces repetition, and stimulates second level ideas

When the imagining is done, we can then do the work to prioritize, consolidate, expand the top ideas, and reconvene to evaluate and decide. It's important to approach inventing options as a process rather than an event.

We shouldn't try to make a decision until we are happy with the choice we identified and have had the opportunity to shape them before the actual negotiation takes place.

Ury and Fisher suggest we should also consider brainstorming with the other side.

With the caveat that we'll need to work on segregating confidential information, and communicating with our team or group about what we can say and not say, and redouble our efforts to create a productive and open session with the purpose to expand options first.

Anyone who has ever fallen in love with a draft creative concept or placeholder copy knows that it's really hard to holding ourselves in an open mind space once we think we saw something or heard something we like. We should be clear about the purpose of the idea session being to invent options rather than reaching agreement. Say Fisher and Ury:

To reduce the risk of appearing committed to any given idea, you can make a habit of advancing at least two alternatives at the same time. You can also put on the table options with which you obviously disagree.

For example, “I could give you the house for nothing, or you could pay me a million dollars in cash for it, or...”

Since you are plainly not proposing either of these ideas, the ones which follow are labeled as mere possibilities, not proposals.

We're so used to having to make decisions on the fly and with imperfect information that it's tempting to assume we're looking to find the best answer, or narrow down, rather than making the negotiating room bigger.

The Circle Chart Fisher and Ury developed helps us multiply options by moving between specific and general, helping us use four types of thinking:

thinking about a particular problem—the factual situation we dislike

thinking about a descriptive analysis—we diagnose an existing situation in general terms

thinking about what ought to be done—still in general terms

thinking about specific and feasible suggestions for action—who might do what tomorrow to put one of the general approached into practice?

Another method to generate multiple options is to look through the eyes of different experts. We could also invent agreements of different strengths. For example, we may not agree on substance, but be on the same page on procedure, or rather than making a permanent change, it could be provisional, we could play with binding and non-binding.

We can change the scope of an agreement, narrowing it or splitting it into parts.

The point of inventing options is to look for mutual gain. Which brings us back to looking for shared interests even when it's less obvious, for example in matters of pricing. With shared interests it's useful to remember that they're latent in every negotiation, and not immediately obvious. For example, do we both care about maintaining a good relationship? What are the costs for both parties if we can't reach an agreement?

Shared interests are also opportunities, say Ury and Fisher. For us to unlock them, we need to still make them explicit, for example as a shared goal. Concrete and future-oriented opportunities are more appealing.

Putting thought into highlighting shared interests makes negotiations smoother and more amicable. Disagreement is often the basis for agreement—what makes a deal go through is a difference in beliefs. The kind of differences that best lend themselves to dovetailing are “differences in interests, in beliefs, in the value placed on time, in forecasts, and in aversion to risk.”

We should remember to help make the decision easy for the other party. The success of our negotiation depends on it.

Management consulting hero Peter Drucker understood where he fit in the business ecosystem. He knew his job wasn't to provide answers, but to ask better questions. Because the answers have to come from the business itself and not by an outsider.

An outsider can provide perspective, help put things in a new light, help us look at them from a different angle, expand options. If we hire the right outsider based on the kind of challenge we face. Which is why it's a very good idea to: a./ be super clear about the real nature of the challenge (the cause); so that b./ we can figure out what kind of skill sets we need to apply toward solving the problem.

Too often, we buy a tactical implementation on one end of the spectrum, or a shiny object on the other.

In the first case, we are treating the symptoms rather than the cause which is why we should heed Albert Einstein's advice, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

In the second we're looking for something outside the problem in hope it will fix it or as Abraham Maslow said, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

Whether we're leaders in large organizations, small companies, our own business, or a business by others, our value comes from addressing core questions. By this definition, we all lead in one way or another right from where we sit. There is always someone looking to us for answers. At the same time, we need to keep looking for ways inside ourselves to get better at providing them.

While the mission defines the fundamental purpose of an organization and how it achieves what it set out to do, it is the vision that defines the way an organization or enterprise will look in the future. The vision should reflect where the business intends to go.

Do we have a vision for the business? As in “we're here,” and “we want to be over there.” Culture has a role in influencing how we make decisions to close the gap between now and then. We have a personal culture as well, and like organizations, we draw from it to support and empower us in our choices.

Culture shows up in the choices we make when we're alone, but also when in a crowd where social pressure may influence us. The degree to which it sways us depends on our vision. Vision is also personal, and it mostly tells us “who we want to be.” Sometimes we confuse this with “where we want to be.”

So we don't work on the right things—we focus more on more polished ways to ask something, rather than how we can bring our skills and experience to a problem so we can ask better questions. Which means we often neglect to design to the way things are now, and may miss the problem entirely. It's about it, not us. But the way we provide value is by continually upgrading ourselves.

Conversation Agent

Conversation Agent focuses on business, technology, digital culture, and customer psychology. At Conversation Agent LLC, I help organizations and brands that want to build better customer experiences tell a new story.